


Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

by TeddyLaCroix (ReadyPlayerZero)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Slash if you squint, love without labels, or just brotherly love, whatever floats your boat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-24
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 06:23:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2014452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReadyPlayerZero/pseuds/TeddyLaCroix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki does not like thunderstorms. Except when he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shelter from the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HallowedHeart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HallowedHeart/gifts).



> The other day, we had a thunderstorm. Because I'm a bad friend, this set the scene for a spontaneous chat-ficlet to make my dear [Tabi](http://omfgtabby.tumblr.com) cry. ;) Here is the cleaned up, slightly expanded version.

  _try imagining a place_  
  _where it's always safe and warm_  
  _"come in," she said; "i'll give you_  
  _shelter from the storm"_  
   Bob Dylan, "Shelter from the Storm"

 

As a small child, Loki loves the weather. He loves basking in the elements and tracking changes in the seasons.

It suits his natural curiosity perfectly. The weather is simultaneously powerful and soothing and impossible to ever truly control; at best, one might borrow the power of the elements. It's steady and predictable (the sun will shine in summer, the rains will come in fall), but ever-changing throughout the year and sometimes fickle and contrary.

When it's particularly sunny and warm, he's as impatient as Thor to get outside. He doesn't share his brother's enthusiasm for running and laughing and playing, but a quieter appreciation for the life-giving rays doesn't make it any less of one. He's perfectly content to find a nice, shady spot and enjoy the season in his own way.

When the rains come, he likes to sit quietly outside and let it drench his hair, pour down his skin, and water him like a sapling emerging from the soil. He feels still and calm, as if he were becoming one with the natural energies of existence. Before the rain, he can feel the threat of it simmering just below his skin, humming with anticipation like one of mother's spells.

When he accompanies his father to realms with cooler, drier climates, he feels something unnameable in his blood come alive. His skin feels refreshed, his lungs feel like they're expanding, and his magic tickles his fingertips with the urge to come out and play chase with the winds. He loves watching the winds invisibly sweeping up anything in their paths that dare to not be secured—and sometimes, even those that are.

What Loki does not like, however, is thunderstorms.

He doesn't like the rolling grumbles of dissatisfied thunder, the angry claps of lightning brightening the sky in threatening bursts, the sheets of precipitation beating down so heavily that he can't see more than ten feet ahead.

He doesn't like the way thunderstorms make summer-loving Asgardians tetchy and impatient and quick to clash swords for something to do.

He doesn't like the way thunderstorms make his mother stare outside and sigh, denied her walks through the gardens. There are spells to keep her feet and skirts dry and shield the top of her head, but it's simply not the same.

He doesn't like the way thunderstorms make his father quiet, unhappily nostalgic and weary. Something about the worn look on his face makes Loki think he would not want to know what memories Odin is recalling, and nothing frightens him more than knowledge that is so unnerving it doesn't make him greedy for it.

But there are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes, even he likes thunderstorms...

... when they bring Thor running to his side to quiet his wails and whimpers, to pull him to the kitchens for a bowl of honeyed milk and then back to his own room to play by a roaring fire—

... when Thor dumps his favourite quilt—the one mother had made for him for his birth—on Loki's head and wraps it around his shoulders and tucks it under his chin, and Loki is surrounded by red and silver threads with woven strands of the brightest blue—

... when Thor tucks into corners with him, arms around him, and promises to protect him from the storm and the drag and the wetness and the restlessness and the furious noises and the sudden, bright lights and the darkness, all the darkness and all of the mysteries they hold—

He especially likes that one.

  _i wanna be safe and warm_  
  _in a beautiful storm_  
  _with somebody who shakes me_  
  _and knows how to take me_  
  _away from this world_  
   Pam Tillis, "Thunder and Roses"

 

As an adolescent, too old to be a child but too young to be a man, Loki does not care one way or another about the weather.

At times he still enjoys sitting in the shade on a warm, sunny day to read. More often than not, however, he's locked away too deeply in the libraries to notice the seasons. He is more fascinated now by the magic in books and blood than that of the skies. What he once looked upon with fascination has become sometimes an inconvenience and most times just another variable to keep track of while focusing on other things.

Loki has overcome many hurdles over the centuries. He will forever be younger and slighter than Thor—forever the "little brother"—but decades of training with his mother have honed his skills in both magic and combat more suited to his speed and agility. He will forever be eyed warily for his silver tongue, but he has learned how to wield his words as a weapon and when it's better to sheath the sword.

(He has not yet overcome the torturously conflicted feelings he has toward his brother, his sun, who casts the shadow he resides in, but who shines too brightly to despise, who is effortlessly strong and charismatic, who makes him seethe with jealousy, but who is equally effortlessly _loyal_ , and who makes him content with familiar warmth and pride.)

(The sensation is not entirely unlike the hum under his skin before the rains: distracting, maddening, but so familiar by now he isn't sure what he'd do without it.)

He still does not like thunderstorms.

Unfortunately, he is at that prickly age where he's impossible to handle correctly. Ignoring him is an insult, but coddling him is a graver one; speaking to him as an adult is perceived as patronizing, and thus, graver still.

He has too much pride to cry out at the bright flashes of lightning; he's instead perfected the art of denial by suppressing any reflexive tremors even when he's alone.

He has too much pride to bury himself in Thor's quilt or other such material comforts; he instead tries a touch too hard to affect indifference by remaining stock still in his room until the thunder ebbs, eyes moving unseeing over the pages of his books and the lengths of his scrolls.

He has _far_ too much pride to run and hide in Thor's room.

(He doesn't have too much pride to drink the honeyed milk, but he fetches it himself these days.)

If in the worst of storms, in the darkest hours of night, Thor occasionally comes creeping into his room to loosen his stiff limbs from his tomes and quills and force him to his feet, to a bath, to bed, and wraps around him and whispers promises of protection from everything the storm represents just as he always did, just as he always will, or so he promises, as if nothing has changed, as if nothing will change, even if Loki is already changing and the mysteries of the dark are no longer something to hide from but the open pool of potential that he eagerly wades into, but Thor doesn't know that, doesn't _need_ to know that—

If Thor still sometimes promises to protect him from the cold and wet and dark—

—Well, none need know.

(And if at these moments Loki feels cherished and bright and warm down to the coldest parts of his slowly darkening soul, well, none need know _that_ , either.)


	2. The Thunder Rolls, pt. 1

_raindrops on the windshield_  
 _there's a storm moving in_  
 _he's headed back from somewhere_  
 _that he never should have been_  
 _and the thunder rolls..._  
   Garth Brooks, "The Thunder Rolls"

 

As a man, Loki spends his first Midgardian thunderstorm lit up by lightning strikes in the otherwise blackened skies.

A crack of thunder stays his hand, stilling him the way it always has even at his most imperturbable, even when nothing else could.

In the heat of battle, a second lasts a year. A heartbeat is too long to wait. Time to think is a luxury. Freezing is not an option. In battle a true warrior reacts to opportunity without conscious thought, and Thor has always been a true warrior.

And yet...

And yet Loki sees his warrior, his non-brother, his _Thor_ hesitate. He sees a thousand years of memories flash through those bright blue eyes, as quick as lightning.

Loki is not a warrior. He can fight, certainly, but his spirit and instincts are not those of a warrior. However quick he might be, he thinks too much: observing every variable, analyzing every option, predicting every outcome. But this time, here, now—

He doesn't think. He reacts.

His sword sinks into his brother's— _no, not his brother, never his brother, it was all lies_ —gut, upward—toward those hateful crashes of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning—into his lungs.

Even gods must breathe.

Even gods bleed.

He is no longer frozen by the storm, but time seems frozen in his stead. At the least, it is slowed to tepid honey as Thor remains suspended for an agonizingly eternal moment, as if gravity itself were in shock.

"But who..." he hears Thor gasp, the sound distant and detached to the Trickster's ears, as if echoed from the other end of a long tunnel, "who will... protect you..."

Some part of Loki wonders that his brother's blood isn't bright and burning and brilliantly white as it drips down his armour toward Midgard below. The peals of thunder are peculiarly muted, at least to Loki's ears. Some part of him is even offended by it, irrationally believing that Thor's very lifeblood should be as explosive and powerful as lightning, irrationally indignant that it's not.

"... from... the storms... now..."

Some part of him wonders that the storm doesn't swallow them all in its grief for its master's life.

"... bro... th—"

Some part of him feels betrayed as he watches Mjolnir—the worthless tool—slips uselessly from his not-brother's hand—how _dare_ she abandon his side?—to precede him to the ground below.

Some part of him wonders why the rain on Midgard tastes of salt.

The rest of him wonders nothing, thinks nothing, _feels_ nothing as he vanishes into the night.


End file.
